Day of Conscience for Darfur rallies Bay Area Jews

Cries of "Never Again" echoed across Crissy Field, but this time the atrocity in question was not the Holocaust but the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

While thousands across the country marched, Bay Area protesters gathered in San Francisco's Presidio on Sunday, April 30, in a rally largely organized by Jews and co-sponsored by Jewish organizations including the American Jewish World Service, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Holocaust Center of Northern California.

More than 30 Bay Area congregations representing every Jewish stream sent groups, plus several college Hillels and Chabad of Stanford University, participated.

Officials estimated the crowd at 15,000 people.

It was part of a national Day of Conscience that locally included a morning vigil on the Golden Gate Bridge and Darfur workshops around the Bay.

All those voices came together to oppose the genocide waged by Arab militias against black Africans in the western desert region of Sudan known as Darfur. Since 2003, the government-backed militias have been decimating towns and raping, torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of Darfurians.

The situation in Darfur, which some estimate has claimed more than 400,000 lives, constitutes the first time the U.S. government has recognized genocide while still occurring.

"The blood of our brothers and sisters calls out to us from the earth," said Congregation Emanu-El Rabbi Sydney Mintz at the rally invocation. "God, give us the chutzpah to shake up our world."

Speakers at the rally included members of Congress, religious leaders, human rights activists and refugees from Darfur itself.

Master of ceremonies Rabbi Henry Shreibman, West Coast director for advancement and outreach at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, told the crowd that two weeks ago the college divested $20 million from its endowment fund representing companies that did business with the Sudanese government.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) won the biggest ovation. "This is a moment of truth for the world," she told the throng. "Africa matters."

She said she would introduce a House bill that would prohibit U.S. companies from doing business with Sudan.

On the other side of the country, up to 75,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to protest the Darfur genocide, the largest of the day's rallies across the nation.

Organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, a collection of 150 faith-based advocacy and humanitarian aid organizations initiated by two Jewish agencies, the D.C. rally featured Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel; Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service; actor George Clooney; and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Addressing the sea of faces in Washington, Saperstein challenged listeners. "An 'A' for effort doesn't do it," he said. "Your legacies and ours will be measured not by efforts alone but by whether, in the end, we stop or fail to stop this genocide."

Activism on Darfur has been a rallying cry among socially conscious Jews for months. The American Jewish World Service also has taken a lead role, with Messinger making two trips to Darfur. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a genocide alert for Darfur even before the government did. And the AJWS and the museum formed the Save Darfur Coalition in 2004.

The extent of Jewish involvement has caused some to ask how much other faith communities have done.

"I don't know on what basis we can quantify what someone else can or should do," Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, commented at a recent Darfur event outside the United Nations. "But it would be shameful if we cannot get faith communities in our country to say this is one of the most important issues of our day."

Sudanese participants noticed a disproportionate Jewish presence at the D.C. rally and in relief efforts in general.

"The people in Darfur know very well and welcome the support of the American Jewish community," said Iessa Dahia, a Darfurian now living in Portland, Maine. "They know the Jewish community has been through that in the Holocaust. The Jewish community has said we cannot allow this to happen again. That's why they are here more than any other community."

Karlo Okoy, a Sudanese pastor living in Lakewood, Colo., echoed the sentiment.

"The present Sudanese killing is exactly the picture of Jewish killing in Germany. They feel the same pain, that's why they came heavily to help out the Sudanese community.

"We see that the American Jewish people helps us more than any other people or country in the world."

In addition to the San Francisco and D.C. protests, other rallies were staged in Portland and Eugene, Ore.; St. Paul, Minn.; Austin, Texas; Tucson and Prescott, Ariz.; Boca Raton, Fla.; Seattle; Somerville, N.J.; Toronto; and Boulder, Colo.

In San Francisco, the nation's second-largest Darfur rally kicked off in the morning with more than 2,000 people linking hands at a vigil on the Golden Gate Bridge.

At the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, the Holocaust Center of Northern California's annual Day of Learning included a Darfur workshop led by Miranda Phillips, a Boston-based Jewish educator and Darfur activist.

After offering a detailed history of the crisis, Phillips noted that only now is Darfur making it onto the national radar. "In all of 2004," she said, "the total coverage on Darfur totaled 24 minutes on all three major networks."

Darfur was definitely on the radar of those attending the Presidio rally.

"Jews understand the word 'genocide' really well," said Molly Schneider while holding up a banner emblazoned with the name of her synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El. "You look around and see a lot of Jews here. It's inspiring."

Rabbi Janet Marder joined 250 congregants from Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills who bused north to the vigil and rally. "We canceled religious school today," she said. "We don't want business as usual.

"As Jews and Americans, we feel a special obligation to speak out about Darfur."

Added David Paktor, a member of Saratoga's Congregation Beth David: "The world stood silent for the Holocaust. I couldn't allow myself to stand silent."




JTA reporters Rachel Silverman, David Silverman and Sue Fishkoff contributed to this report.